Weepers Read online

  “You bet,” said Father Casimiro. “I was looking around; I apologize. Are you hurt?”

  “Am I hurt? You believe this guy?” Jimmy said to his two friends, who immediately started laughing. “Hey, Father Clumsy, if I was hurt, you’d be on the ground, priest or no priest.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not hurt, so…” Father Casimiro said, hoping to end this encounter and get on with his walk.

  “So? You new here, Father Clumsy?” Jimmy asked.

  “Yes. I’ll be working with Father Bonifacio. Maybe you know him?”

  “Yeah, we know Father Joe.”

  “Well, good. I’ll be at the Cherry Street Settlement, and I hope to see you boys there.”

  “Oh, so now you’re a wise guy, huh, Father Clumsy?”

  “Casimiro,” the young priest said with a bit more firmness.

  “What?”

  “Casimiro. My name is Father Casimiro, Jimmy.” Father Casimiro’s initial shock by the hostile audacity of this young man melded into impatience at Jimmy’s rudeness.

  “I don’t give a rat—”

  Jimmy stopped talking and looked over Father Casimiro’s shoulder.

  “You all right, Father?” came a voice from behind the priest. Father Casimiro was surprised to see the large man with the cigar now standing next to him.

  “Oh, yes, thank you.”

  The three boys walked away and toward the projects. Jimmy’s arms were raised in mock surrender. On the back of the boys’ T-shirts was a coat of arms crossed by a sword and a pitchfork. Written above the coat of arms, in red letters with a white outline, was SATAN’S KNIGHTS. The three boys reached the projects side of the street and were immediately surrounded by a dozen Knights. Andy returned Jimmy’s lemon ice as Jimmy gazed back at the priest. After a moment, Jimmy turned back to the group and together, the black-shirted boys all entered the interior of the projects and vanished.

  The large man said, “So, Father, I heard you’re new here. Listen—”

  “Milwaukee,” he said, shifting his attention from the projects to the man talking to him.

  “Milwaukee. Listen, you said you’re gonna be workin’ with Father Joe, right? You stick close to him. Oh, and Father? Not for nothin’, but watch out for those guys.”

  “Satan’s Knights?” Father Casimiro pointed a thumb across the street. “They may need my help.”

  “I’ll tell ya what they need, but then you might not let me in church no more.” The man laughed, patted Father Casimiro on the shoulder, and walked back to his friend and lawn chair.

  By the time Father Casimiro reached Roosevelt Street, he had regained his composure. A pounding stream of water spewed from a fire hydrant across the street. Several kids played in the water while two others were using a garbage can cover to direct the arc of the discharge.

  “Hey, Billy, hold it up,” one of the kids shouted as Father Casimiro approached.

  “Gotcha.” Billy directed the stream downward. “G’head, Father. We won’t getcha wet.”

  “Thank you.” Father Casimiro waved his appreciation to the boys across the street and felt only a welcomed mist carried on a breeze as he walked by. He loved the sociability of the brownstone tenements tied together with clotheslines spanning alleyways. He took in the entire symphony of the neighborhood—the shouts, the laughter, the hum and echo of the melody—as he continued walking.

  When he reached 22-32 Roosevelt Street, Father Casimiro stood for a moment in front of the Romanesque architecture, looking up at the four large stained-glass windows of St. Joachim’s Church. He smiled like a mischievous child and entered the building.

  Father Casimiro walked up one flight of stairs, then along a mutely lit hall and into Father Joe’s outer office. A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman with a Lucille Ball hairstyle and a blue floral swing dress was watering a tall bamboo plant in the far corner of the room.

  “Are you Sally?” Father Casimiro asked.

  “Huh? Oh, my, yes, I’m Sally.” Sally placed her cigarette on the rim of a large, crowded clay ashtray on her desk and walked toward Father Casimiro. She nervously switched the watering can to her left hand and extended her right. “I didn’t hear you come in. You must be Father Casimiro,” she said, shaking the young priest’s hand. The ceiling fan overhead pushed the stale summer air through a mixture of perfume and cigarette smoke.

  “I’m a little early—”

  “Early, late, doesn’t much matter around here. Father Joe is with a parishioner.” Sally nodded toward the closed door with a wooden crucifix above it as she walked back and put the watering can on the floor next to the bamboo plant. “Want me to tell him you’re here?”

  Father Casimiro could hear muffled conversation coming from behind the closed door to Father Joe’s office. The radio on Sally’s desk played A Thousand Miles Away, and for the first time, he felt a little homesick. “I’ll just wait.”

  “Glad you’re here, Father.” Sally crushed her lipstick-kissed cigarette in the ashtray, making certain it was out. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Saturday?”

  “I’m here most every day. Please close the window when you two leave; it’s supposed to rain tonight.” Sally seemed to slow down as she lifted a framed photo of a young soldier, kissed it gently, caringly placed it back on her desk, and just as caringly draped an onyx rosary over it. Then, as if startled back to the moment, she quickly emptied the ashtray into the trashcan, turned off the radio, slung an iris-embroidered blue and white handbag over her shoulder, said, “Goodnight,” and walked out.

  “Goodnight,” Father Casimiro said to Sally’s back.

  * * *

  Inside Father Joe’s office, Anna had composed herself. “I won’t talk about it. Not now.”

  “Anna, I can assure you, in thirty years as a priest, I’ve heard it all.”

  “But not about me. Just help me stop the unraveling. Tell me how I can fix it all.”

  Father Joe nodded. “When we were kids, me and your father, he taught me how to play pool. He was terrific. I was just okay. One night, we were in this little pool room on Canal Street and I said, ‘Pomp, give me some pointers?’ He watched me make some shots and then he said, ‘Joey, pool is all about the distance from the cue tip to the cue ball, which should never be more than two inches. And those two inches are all you can control.’”

  “So what’re my two inches?” Anna asked.

  “Let’s find out. But let’s take our first steps on ground where you feel safe. Tell me only what you want to tell me. We’ll talk again and again. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Anna was suddenly aware the radio had been turned off in the outer office.

  “Unraveling,” Father Joe repeated. “But not unraveled. So, how about you and me and God put our heads together and stop this unraveling. What does it feel like?”

  “I feel like I’m off course, abandoned…vacant… my best years are gone and now I’m just falling apart. All of my emotions are right here in my throat.” Anna placed both hands on the front of her neck. “The slightest thing, a song, will start me crying. It’s getting more difficult to hold it. It’s hard to explain.”

  “You’re doing fine. Go on.”

  “I have so little patience with my sons. I let the boys get away with stuff because I just don’t want to deal with it. Then I get angry with myself for letting them do whatever it was, and I yell, ‘Don’t do this; don’t do that, just sit quietly.’ Later, I feel bad about being too tough, and so it goes.” Anna blotted tears with Father Joe’s handkerchief.

  “You haven’t been to church since Mac disappeared.”

  “Just about.” Anna gave her eyes one more swab. “But right now I’m more concerned about Angelo.”

  “Anna, unless someone else is going to raise Angelo, you have to pull yourself together.”

  “I’ll do anything for my boys.”

  “Good. Start by coming to church again.”

  “I’m not so sure God will take me back.” r />
  “He already has, Annabella. We should meet every week…more if you want to.”

  “I think…that would be good,” she said slowly, thoughtfully nodding.

  “Let Sally know what works best for you. I will arrange my time to your convenience, and if you can’t come here, I will come to you. Okay?”

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem. Now, talk to me about Angelo,” he said, lighting another cigarette.

  “I need to understand what’s going on with him.”

  “Okay,” Father Joe said. “I’ll tell you something about the boys around here. When I was growing up in this neighborhood, I had four friends. Your father, Nunzio Sabino, George Keller, and Nick Gostopolas. Nick’s daughter is a friend of yours, right?”

  “Yeah, Rosemarie’s my best friend. She lives in my building. Her son Spiro and Angelo were in the same class in PS-1, and now they’re both going to PS-65. They start the seventh grade a week from Tuesday. So what about you, and my father, and…?”

  “The five of us were inseparable. All for one and one for all. Even today, we all keep in touch. We play cards on the third Tuesday of every month.”

  “Ever since I can remember, my father has told me stories about you and him and Uncle Nunzio. And you know I love Uncle Nunzio—he’s my godfather. But he is who he is…the Boss, and you’re a priest.”

  “Yeah and Nick was a cop. But Anna, I’m not talking about what path you have chosen. I’m talking about what you are. And we are friends. No matter what. Period.” Father Joe walked over to the browning black-and-white picture hanging on the wall of five barely teenage boys with their arms around each other and smiling. He took it off the wall and walked back to Anna. “By the time this picture was taken, we knew who we were.”

  “But, so young?”

  “In this neighborhood, we grow up quickly. But in the projects…no comparison.”

  “What do you mean?” Anna asked.

  “There is a kind of social order in this neighborhood and it’s worse in the projects,” Father Joe said. “By the time a boy hits his teens, he’s either prey, predator, or he has mastered his environment.”

  “Mastered his environment?”

  “Yes, he is respected by the weak and the predators. This is a very difficult line to walk for anyone. Your father, Nunzio, Nick, George, and I made it, primarily because we had each other. We had our friendship.”

  “Father Joe, you became a priest, my father works at the meat market—”

  “I know what you’re going to say. But, like I said, it’s not about what you do; it’s about what you are. Nunzio Sabino and your father are stand-up guys. And so am I.”

  “But Uncle Nunzio’s no priest.”

  “No, he’s not. But I’ll tell you something, many of the priests and almost all of the politicians I know I wouldn’t trust with a nickel, but I’d trust Nunzio with my life.”

  “But, my Angelo is just a child.”

  “Uptown, yes. In this neighborhood, maybe, maybe not. But in the projects, no. If Angelo fits in perfectly uptown, he will draw needless and dangerous attention to himself in the projects, where he has to exist every day. I hear the fourteen- and fifteen-year-old kids from the projects talking about who’s better than whom. But they don’t use school grades, sports, or merit badges to distinguish themselves. They use a who-can-beat-up-who rating system.

  “That’s the system that Angelo is stuck with right now. He must learn to navigate through that system without becoming a victim of it. He must appear tough but not act tough. He must have a sense of himself but not be too self-conscious. He must have a sense of humor that doesn’t offend or make him seem silly. He must understand the first secret of courage, which is to appear unafraid, even when you’re scared to death. He doesn’t live uptown. Anna, listen to what I’m telling you and rely on the fact that Angelo is a good kid, and you have given him judgment and strength. He comes from good people.”

  Anna nodded.

  “Okay, let’s take one thing at a time. Tell me what he’s doing that concerns you most.”

  “What concerns me most…,” Anna repeated almost to herself. “It’s hard to pinpoint. For the first couple of years after Mac disappeared, Angelo had terrible nightmares. I would hear him cry out at night and I’d go comfort him. Sometimes I would find him looking out of his window at Cherry Street and crying. Then one night, about two years ago, I had put the boys to bed and felt certain they were asleep. I poured myself a glass of wine and sat on the floor in my living room listening to music and feeling very alone…and, I guess, sorry for myself.

  She continued. “Anyway, there I was sniveling. I don’t know how long he had been there, but when I looked up, Angelo was standing next to me. He started to cry and I held him. He told me he was sorry for screwing everything up. He said he was going to be brave and not be a screw-up anymore.”

  “A screw-up?” Father Joe shrugged his shoulders.

  “He told me that’s what Mac used to call him. A screw-up.” Anna shook her head. “Mac told him that he screwed up our whole life and that he would always be a screw-up.”

  “Anna, you never told—”

  “I never knew.” Anna covered her mouth with her fingers.

  “Why would Mac say something like that to Angelo?”

  “Father Joe, you are one of the few people who knew how Mac felt about Angelo.”

  “But, I always thought with time—”

  “With time? Oh, Father Joe, Mac never accepted Angelo. He never hugged him. Never kissed him. I can’t remember Mac ever saying a kind word to Angelo. Except…the night he disappeared, Angelo told me that Mac said he was a good kid. You can’t imagine how much that means to Angelo. He holds on to that.”

  “What does Angelo think happened on the night his father disappeared, Anna?”

  “That somehow he was supposed to take better care of his father that night.” Anna sighed in frustrated disbelief.

  “He was only seven. Why in the world—?”

  “I know, I know, but it’s part of what Angelo feels and what makes him, well, him. And then, sometimes he thinks Mac left because of him.”

  “Because of him?”

  “Yeah, that must be the ‘screw-up’ thing, I don’t know. Anyway, that’s probably why he holds on so tightly to his father saying he was a good kid.”

  “Anna, does Angelo know about the Zara brothers?”

  “No.” Anna’s gray eyes turned black and her jaw clenched. “No. Nothing about that.”

  “He must be told. We need to talk about telling him…but not right now.”

  “I know.” Anna averted her eyes, momentarily lost. “Anyway, after the night Angelo saw me crying, no matter how much I tried to convince him that he wasn’t a screw-up, that my crying had nothing to do with him, that it was okay to cry—he just became more distant. No—not distant, exactly—more like he’s trying to be strong for me. He’s taking on the responsibility of protecting me. He keeps his fears locked up, you know? And he doesn’t cry anymore. I know he’s troubled, but he won’t talk to me about it. I say, ‘Angelo, you’re still a kid; it’s my job to take care of you.’ And then, there’s the edge thing.”

  “Edge thing?”

  “One day, I’m taking the subway with Angelo and Adam. As the train came into the station, most people backed away from the edge of the platform. Not my Angelo; he walked to the edge. I mean right to the edge. He stood there as the train roared in a couple of inches in front of him. I said, ‘Angelo, what’s the matter with you? Back up.’ Then the other day, I looked out the window and saw him crossing the street. A car was coming. It looked like he was going to walk right into the car. It just missed him. Like a bullfighter. And he just kept walking.”

  “Did you ask him about this?”

  “He said he likes getting close to the edge. But sometimes I think he might—”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Anna.”

  “Don’t tell me not to worry. T
ell me it’s normal, he’ll outgrow it, all boys do that stuff, but don’t tell me not to worry. Please.”

  “You’re right. Let’s start by putting it in the context of his other behavior.”

  “Other behavior…sometimes he goes to that spot on Cherry Street, where he last saw Mac, and just stands there looking around and talking to…no one…himself. My mother saw him a couple of days ago walking in circles around that spot and talking to the sidewalk.”

  “How often does he do this?”

  “Couple of times a week. It’s like he gets something in his head and he has to go back there and look around.”

  “Have you asked him about this?”

  “No. I don’t want him to think… It’s hard for me to reach him sometimes. I’m afraid of losing him, I mean, losing him further inside himself.”

  “Where does he usually hang out?” Father Joe asked.

  “When he’s not working, mostly he hangs out with his friends at the Cherry Street playground, or the penny arcade on Mott Street, or at Mo-Mo’s.”

  “Anna, you have to risk talking to Angelo about your concerns, for his sake. And please encourage Angelo to hang out at the Cherry Street Settlement.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Actually, a new priest is coming to run the Settlement.”

  “Oh, no, are you leaving?” Anna was dismayed.

  “No, no…Father Casimiro will be working with me. He’s young, bright, and will be a great mentor for the kids.”

  “Father Casimiro,” Anna confirmed.

  “He arrives today. With your permission, I’ll give him some background and tell him to expect a visit from Angelo tomorrow. I’ll talk to Angelo Sunday after Mass. You’ll be there?”

  Anna nodded. “Please tell the new priest whatever you want.”

  Father Joe put out his cigarette and they both stood up. “So, Sunday is Angelo’s birthday.”

  “Yes, thirteen.” Anna kissed Father Joe on his cheek and squeezed his arm. “Thank you.”

  “God bless you, Anna.” Father Joe opened his office door and saw Father Casimiro in the reception area. “Oh, Robert, I’m glad you’re here. I was just mentioning you to my dear friend. Robert, this is Mrs. Pastamadeo. Anna, this is Father Casimiro.”